PUBLISHING

may be used to represent software used
for drawing and editing pictures, and a
picture of a book with a question mark on
its cover may represent the text of a user
manual or a help file.
Interactivity
In the context of computer engineering,
the ways in which software accepts and
responds to user input. In other words,
a system is considered ‘interactive’ if it
reacts to human input.
Internet
The internet is the global computer
network connecting billions of computers
all over the world (through the network
protocol TCP/IP). The internet dates back
to a group of interconnected computer
networks in U.S. universities in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. Contrary to
popular belief, the World Wide Web (with
its hypertext pages) is not the internet,
but just one service running on top of it.
(Others include e-mail, BitTorrent, and
voice-over-IP services such as Skype.)
iOS
Apple’s mobile operating system for the
iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Apple TV.
J
JavaScript
JavaScript is a relatively simple, special-purpose
programming language for
running small programs directly on web
pages, within the web browser. JavaScript
is very popular for common tasks such as
checking whether all fields of a web form
have been filled in, or for building websites
that behave like software applications
(such as web mail services). Despite its
name, JavaScript is unrelated to the more
complex programming language Java.
JPEG
Acronym for Joint Photographic Experts
Group, and also known as JPG. JPEG is
a file format used for digital images, and
particularly suitable for photographs and
full-color artworks. The JPEG format has
a rich color palette of millions of colors,
but it also compresses data through
reduction of visual details, resulting in a
loss of image quality. In practice however,
this loss of quality is often invisible to the
human eye.
K
KF8
KF8 is the latest ebook format used by
Amazon for its Kindle range of e-reader
devices. Like EPUB3, it is internally based
on HTML5. See also AZW and MOBI.
Kindle
Amazon’s Kindle is a range of handheld
e-reader devices and companion software
applications for reading ebooks, particularly
in Amazon’s proprietary AZW, KF8
and MOBI ebook formats.
Kobo
Kobo is a company that produces a range
of handheld e-reader devices and companion
software. It also has its own online
store where users can purchase ebooks
(mainly in the EPUB format).
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